I'll say this—I never have cause to complain about the mystery components in Holly Jackson's stories. It's the other parts that has me feeling more iffy.

But first things first, I just can't get over the cleverness of this premise. Jet is attacked and left for dead, but she miraculously survives though she only has seven days left before her resulting brain aneurysm will rupture and kill her. She wants to use her last days to figure out who killed her. Along with her childhood best friend and sidekick, Billy, they go around sticking their noses where they don't belong, trying to suss out her killer before it's too late.

Holly Jackson's mysteries always feel a little retro à la Nancy Drew, and Not Quite Dead Yet falls right into that camp. There are clues, secrets, red herrings, and surprises galore, and of course I gobbled it all up. At a time when other authors of the genre can't be bothered to put any real clues into their mysteries and rely more on wacky twists to drive their stories along, reading Holly Jackson's is a breath of fresh air.

It was so much fun to armchair detect, mulling over all the clues, spotting the red herrings, and seeing what I could figure out all on my own. And Jet's childhood best friend/sidekick Billy makes for the perfect Bess/George to Jet's Nancy, and their smidgen of romance was minor enough so as to not distract. Of course if you're a mystery enthusiast, you'll probably see most of it coming from a mile away, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.

But what does make it less enjoyable is the writing style. This is Jackson's adult debut (after a few YA books, including the famous A Good Girl's Guide to Murder), and well, it doesn't really feel any more adult than her previous books. Jet is supposedly 27 years old, yet if you took ten years off her age, you could conceivably have the exact same story. She and every single character in here reads either like a sullen teenager or is sketched through the eyes of one.

I've seen this happen before. Authors start out writing YA, then as they and their readers mature, they make the jump to adult fiction, with the hope that their fanbase will follow and grow with them. But the problem is that some authors have trouble making this jump. Either they've gotten so used to writing YA style that they don't quite know how to do adult, or they themselves are not yet mature enough to be able to pull off that voice. Either way, it's a clumsy first attempt, and that's what happened here.

The other issue could be the format. The A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series was mixed media, as if you're reading a dossier of an actual investigation, and it was superbly done. This here though is just regular prose, and it felt considerably less successful. Jackson's reliance on dialogues and extremely short paragraphs (sometimes as short as a sentence fragment) makes it chaotic and at times difficult to follow. It took me three separate tries just to get through the initial chapter, in which we are inexplicably introduced to every single character in the book, all in one go.

Back to the mystery for a second. I know I said I have nothing to complain about, but there is one thing that left me unsatisfied. The main mystery wrapped up just fine, but there were multiple side mysteries that popped up along the way (as is oft the case with books of this genre), some of them quite serious in their own right. And though we find out whodunit in each case, there was no real reckoning for the perpetrators of those crimes within the tale. I found the attitude to just shrug and move on decidedly odd.

Okay, one more thing since I'm laying it all out there. I always get a little weirded out if there is disdain towards animals or children in the pages of a book (and not as a way to forward the plot or the characters). And while the pet in this book was treated with reverence, the attitude towards the baby was such obvious scorn while serving no real purpose, I can only imagine it's the author's own leaking onto the pages. Every time this happened, I was jerked out of the story because it was so jarring and unnecessary, and I really wish editing had caught it.

So now I'm at this awkward spot where I'm not sure where I stand with Holly Jackson. I adored the first two books of her A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series and wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone in need of some modern day Nancy Drew. But it seems with her latest books, she's veering in a direction with her style that doesn't really jibe with my preferences. Time will tell, but for now, maybe I just need to contend myself with rereads of her old books rather than venture more into her new ones.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

Ooh, how fun to don one's detective cap and suss out a killer in the midst, all under the guise of a party!

Pip, our favorite teen detective from A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, is joining friends for an evening of sleuthing. They're having a murder mystery party set in the 1920s, complete with costumes and accents. And when someone "dies", there are plenty of clues and red herrings to cast suspicion in every which way.

Reading this novella reminds me just how much I loved the original series. Pip is such a smart and spunky heroine, and it's thoroughly entertaining to follow along as she tries to figure out the killer. The way the clues are laid out and the setting of a remote island with a dysfunctional, wealthy family exude so much Agatha Christie vibes.

Since this is just a pretend murder, the stakes are low. It feels more cozy than suspenseful, but the book does a nice job of injecting some dark atmosphere into the mix, so it's still quite riveting. In fact, I had trouble putting it down and breezed through the whole thing in about two hours.

I will say, I don't generally gravitate towards novellas (or short stories, for that matter). It's because I find them to be a bit unsatisfying. Just as you're getting into the whole thing, it's already over. And it felt a bit like that here. I wanted more. More of the murder, more of the solving, more of the explanation. But I suppose it's better to end up wanting more than wanting less, so that's a small complaint.

It was definitely fun to revisit Pip's world. I was a little sad that the series was over, so I'm glad to have this bonus story so I could experience just a bit more of what I loved.

Also, as an aside, is this sort of murder mystery game a real thing? Because I need it in my life pronto.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

To be fair, As Good As Dead wasn't bad. But up till now, this has been my favorite YA mystery series for very specific reasons. And unfortunately, I feel like this last book in the trilogy completely jumped the shark.

One of the reasons I adore this series is because of Pip. She's smart, fearless, and snarky, the perfect rendition of a modern-day Nancy Drew. But not in this book. In this book, she is angry and traumatized, and has turned into my least-favorite trope of all time: a pill-popping, freaking out, paranoid, therapy-is-not-for-me female narrator.

Of course she's traumatized by what happened to her in the last two books. Who wouldn't be, if this was real life? But I don't always want darker and grittier and more realistic in everything I read. One of the main reasons I escape into books is to take comfort in strong characters who can kick ass again and again, rising from the ashes no matter what happens to them. So the fact that this book shat all over its strong female character is a huge disappointment.

My other problem is the mystery, or lack thereof. In books 1 and 2, we follow Pip as she investigates, talks to suspects, gathers clues, and makes deductions. In other words, your standard Nancy Drew brought to life. But in this book, the mystery is just a small subset of the whole story, and it is over quickly, with barely any detecting.

So what is this story taken up with? Well, the first 100 pages is devoted to Pip raging and popping pills. Then we mercifully get into the core mystery of this book, but that's wrapped up pretty quickly by the end of Part I. At that point, the book takes a turn in a direction I don't even recognize for this series and its characters. It is so out of left field that I was just stunned (and not in a good way).

And to make matters worse, the entirety of Part II is obvious. It's clear what is going to happen, and the book just takes 200 pages to spell it out in long form. I don't have to have surprise after surprise in my books, but I'm not a fan of reading hundreds of pages when things can only go one way.

Also, at the risk of sounding like an old fogey, I don't think this book is YA-appropriate. Books 1 and 2 were Young Adult, yes, but not this book. The fact that Pip skulks around and procures drugs from the neighborhood drug dealer, then inhales said drugs in order to take the edge off her trauma, not to mention what happens in the second half of the book, makes this one of the darkest books I have ever read, not just in YA.

If you're thinking about reading this series, I still recommend it, especially books 1 and 2. Thankfully, each book is self-contained, with a mystery that's all wrapped up by the end. Each subsequent book does reference what happens in earlier ones, so read them in order for maximum spoiler-free enjoyment.

If the other two books in this series didn't exist, I'm sure I would have enjoyed this and found very little cause for complaint. But they do, and I can't just erase them from my mind. I fell in love with the Pip and the mysteries of those books, so in comparison, this book was a shock and a disappointment.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

I made a promise. . . . I said I would never do this again, never play the detective, never again lose myself.

Pip has sworn off solving mysteries for good. Now she's just following the trials from her one and only bout of sleuthing and updating her podcast with all the latest developments. But when a friend goes missing and the police refuses to do anything, Pip knows she'll have to step up again, even if it costs her everything.

Sometimes I read a book, and it so far exceeds my expectations that I wonder afterwards if maybe I'd hallucinated. That's how I felt about the first book in this series. It was young adult, yet it was so smart, sharp, gritty, and utterly unputdownable. Now that I've read book 2, I know it wasn't just a fluke because it yet again exceeded all my expectations.

I'm one of those people who grew up reading Nancy Drew (and The Hardy Boys, of course, but Nancy was my main jam). And so I'm always on the lookout, hoping some new, smart, spunky teen detective would pick up the mantle and delight me once again. And I've found exactly that in Pip.

One of my favorite things about this series is the way the investigation unfolds. Clues are collected and followed up, which then leads to the next set of steps and clues. It's all very logical. And the dossier format of interviews, articles, maps, notes, etc. is so masterfully done that it feels like I'm in the middle of a real investigation.

Just a word of warning: this isn't one of those mystery series you can read in any order you'd like. This book contains crucial information on the resolution of book 1, something I'm very thankful for because I have absolutely terrible book-memory. But it means you must read the books in order or risk being completely spoiled.

As I'm getting older, I've noticed that I'm slowly outgrowing YA, but this series still speaks to me. Its mysteries and the way they expose the darkness of human nature, but also its cleverness and resourcefulness through its teen detective, appeals to all ages. I cannot wait for book 3!

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars

"Who do you think I am, an amateur?"

Move aside, Nancy Drew! There's a new teen detective in town. And she won't rest until she's unearthed all your secrets and gotten to the bottom of a mystery that has long held her town captive.

Pip never truly believed what all of Fairview has accepted: that Sal Singh murdered his beautiful and popular girlfriend Andie Bell and then killed himself. Five years later, Pip is a senior in high school, and decides for her final project that she's going to find out once and for all what really happened that night.

I'm always in the mood for a good whodunnit. Give me a small group of suspects, everyone hiding secrets, more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at, and red herrings galore, and I'm in heaven. I loved putting on my detective cap and puzzling out the clues alongside Pip as she investigates and solves this mystery.

For me, in order for a mystery to be successful, it has to be so riveting that there is no room for me to think. Once my mind gets going, it has this annoying habit of supplying me with random unsolicited guesses, some of which inevitably turn out to be right, and ruining the surprises. So it's best if I'm so taken with the story that I'm only surfacing to turn the pages as fast as I can. And this story was exactly that.

I grew up on Nancy Drew, and have been looking for an older version of that for as long as I've outgrown it. And how wonderful that this story turned out to be all that I've been looking for and more. Pip is clever, spunky, and fearless, the perfect teen detective staring down secrets and murderers. And the fact that this is a series means I won't have to say goodbye to her just yet.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars